Interesting that Budde's church denomination profited about 53 million for facilitating immigrants to social services groups in 2023 and they processed twice the number in 2024.
Seems like the immigrant game is quite the profit maker for her denomination.
Quote:
Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde's sermon to President Trump during an inaugural prayer service, coupled with her church's advocacy for humanitarian immigration programs, reveals a striking hypocrisy one that could be seen as self-serving and even a conflict of interest.
That's because the federal contracting arm of the church, Episcopal Migration Ministry (EMM), is paid to bring in people on resettlement programs that Trump has temporarily paused and targeted for re-evaluation.
EMM budget figures for 2024 are not available yet, but in 2023 it earned $53 million from various taxpayer-funded government programs to resettle 3,600 individuals.
EMM "sponsored" 6,400 individuals from 48 countries in 2024. The leading nationalities were Afghans under a special humanitarian program, refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and others in smaller numbers from seven distinct special resettlement programs.
So this is wildly profitable for the EMM, nothing altruistic about it. It is also paid for on the taxpayer dime.
As always, there is more than meets the eye.
Quote:
EMM also brings in LGBTQ refugees and asylees in a special federal refugee program started during the Obama administration called "Preferred Communities."
This program pays a premium over standard refugee resettlement for contractors that resettle "refugees experiencing social or psychological difficulties, including emotional trauma resulting from war and/or sexual or gender-based violence; survivors of torture; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) refugees; refugees who are HIV positive; populations with physical disabilities or other medical conditions."
Then there is the public-private partnership program misnamed "Matching Grant."
In addition...
Quote:
Forbes reported that USCCB affiliate Catholic Charities USA, which has its hand in all aspects of immigration and seems to get money from every government agency except NASA, received $1.4 billion in taxpayer dollars in 2021. That's 68 times more than EMM got that year.
It was never intended that the sponsoring organizations, formerly known as "Voluntary Agencies," would be purely federal contractors, with all the behavior, untoward incentives, money, and influence-peddling that this brings, not to mention questions of church-state relations which are never raised in this context.
There is nothing Charitable or christian about these endevors. It is just a huge money grab at the taxpayer expense, benifiting these para church organizations.
Sounds like the money changers and profiteers that Jesus drove out of the Temple, only difference is, Jesus isn't here to drive these money changers out of His house any longer. They get away with it by hooking up with government agencies, in what seems like a huge church/state seperation issue and of course a huge money grab.